Stirring Passions in Hockey Hotbed

Michigan Tech Huskies Are Off to a Milestone Start

Slide Show|14 Photos

A Hockey Hotbed

A Hockey Hotbed

CreditLauren Justice for The New York Times

HOUGHTON, Mich. — Hockey rules this remote part of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where it is played by everyone from children to those in their 70s and 80s. All through the long winter it is always game on — in modern arenas, outside (into the wee hours of the night) and in two of the oldest hockey rinks in the world.

Professional hockey was born here in Copper Country in 1902, 15 years before the N.H.L. was formed. Even before that, the game was king in Houghton, Hancock, Calumet and nearby towns when they were at the center of a mining boom.

The mining is gone, the woods dotted with abandoned buildings and ghost towns. Only about 44,000 live in the area now, but the love affair with hockey endures. And the Michigan Tech Huskies are winning again, at last.

Photo

The Michigan Tech pep band performed during a home game against Minnesota-Duluth on Dec. 12.

Credit
Lauren Justice for The New York Times

Tech’s hockey tradition stretches back 95 years and includes three N.C.A.A. Division I titles, in the 1960s and ’70s, but the Huskies have finished above .500 only once since 1993.

This season, though, they opened with 10 straight victories, their best start in history, and achieved their first No. 1 ranking. Now 13-3-0, Tech is ranked No. 5, having split a two-game series with No. 7 Minnesota-Duluth last week.

“The last 20 years have been brutal,” said Michael Tomasi, 62, a longtime fan of Tech, which is in Houghton. “But this year they’ve raised everyone’s morale. They raised the morale of me.”

The sports pages of the local newspaper, The Daily Mining Gazette, track the fortunes of high school teams, senior teams, women’s teams and town teams through all their rivalries. But Michigan Tech, a university of about 7,100 students, is the one team nearly everyone in Copper Country roots for.

10 Miles

MICHIGAN

KEWEENAW PENINSULA

Lake

Superior

Houghton

Portage Lake

41

Lake Superior

150 Miles

Area of

detail

MINN.

CANADA

WIS.

MICHIGAN

Lake

Michigan

Milwaukee

Lansing

Detroit

Chicago

ILL.

IND.

OHIO

“Everywhere you go, Walmart, McDonald’s, the local hardware store, the bars, someone’s always talking about Michigan Tech hockey, whether it’s good or bad,” said Mel Pearson, the Huskies’ fourth-year coach and a Tech alumnus. “I learned a long time ago I just need to say thank you. But you want that — you want people to care.”

The Huskies are led by goalie Jamie Phillips, a junior from southern Ontario whose .939 save percentage is tied for fifth in Division I.

The team’s senior co-captain Tanner Kero grew up across the Portage Lake Lift Bridge in Hancock and is an example of how much hockey means in the area.

“It’s just the way of life around here,” he said. “Everyone’s out, either on the canal when it freezes or on the big lake. There are multiple outdoor rinks. After school, soon as you get home, you get your skates and just go and play for hours on the rink. Of course, it helps that we have winter for 90 percent of the year.”

Photo

Skating for hours after school, into the nighttime, is a common pastime for high school and junior high students in Houghton.

Credit
Lauren Justice for The New York Times

Kero has 10 siblings. One of them, Devin, a freshman, is a backup goalie for Tech. A cousin who grew up across the canal in Houghton, Blake Hietala, is a senior forward. Together they staged family hockey games on backyard rinks and went on to play in the Houghton versus Hancock high school games that electrify the communities. In a place where everyone knows everyone, they have a special appreciation for how things are going this season.

“We walk around town, and people know us, but we know them, too,” Hietala said. “That’s awesome, but the main thing is that I’ve been a huge Tech fan all my life. The Huskies were never very good. So to be part of this now, I have trouble talking about it because it’s so hard to grasp.”

Everyone who plays hockey here, including Hietala and the Keros, has skated downtown at Dee Stadium, a wooden arena built in 1927 that stands on the site of the Amphidrome. In 1902, the Houghton mining magnate James R. Dee built the Amphidrome as the centerpiece of the International Hockey League.

The star of that league was Jack Gibson, an Ontario-born dentist known as Doc who lived in Houghton and lured some of the game’s biggest early stars with salaries, forbidden at the time in Canadian hockey. Houghton’s team, Portage Lake, had the future Hall of Famers Joe Hall, Riley Hern, Hod Stuart and Bruce Stuart and was crowned de facto world champion in 1904 after thrashing the Montreal Wanderers in a two-game series. Later, Cyclone Taylor, perhaps early hockey’s greatest player, starred for Portage Lake.

Photo

From left, Tyler Bakkila, 13; Lane Alhoinna, 18; and Travis Bessner, 17, took a break from skating at a rink on Edwards Street in Houghton on Dec. 11.

Credit
Lauren Justice for The New York Times

That history has not been lost here. Last Thursday night, a group that included junior high school students and members of the Finlandia University women’s team played shinny on an outdoor rink in Houghton. Tyler Bakkila, 13, brightened when a visitor mentioned Dee Stadium.

“I used to think it wasn’t important — just an old place in a small town,” he said. “But then you realize, I’m playing in the birthplace of professional hockey.”

Twelve miles north in Calumet is Calumet Colosseum, a cavernous hut of wood and steel built in 1913. Only Matthews Arena in Boston is older, but it was knocked out of action for two years by a fire; the Colosseum has been used continuously for 101 years.

“The hockey is everywhere,” said Randy McKay, a Tech graduate from Montreal who won two Stanley Cups with the Devils and returned to the Houghton area after retiring from the N.H.L. in 2000. “It’s in people’s bodies and souls.”

Photo

The Portage Lake team, a powerhouse of the International Hockey League, in 1911.Credit
Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections

Last Friday, Bob Makolin glided powerfully across the Colosseum ice on a pair of sturdy old skates. The building’s walls are festooned with photos of Calumet teams dating to the International Hockey League days. Makolin is in some of the photos from the 1940s and ’50s, when he played with various local teams, including the CLK Radars.

“They wouldn’t let me play in the league unless I got a helmet, but I didn’t want to wear one,” he said. “Besides, it cost $100. So I quit.”

Makolin remembers the days more than 60 years ago when his Radars regularly beat Tech, then known as the Michigan College of Mining and Technology.

“They were never in our class,” he said. “But hey, they’re good this season.”

Whether Michigan Tech continues to be good this season may not matter in the end. A Western Collegiate Hockey Association title or a trip to the Frozen Four would be great, but hockey has always thrived in the hilly towns of Copper Country, regardless of how Tech does.

After a Huskies practice, Devin Kero, 20, was asked where he might be in his 70s or 80s.

“Yeah, I could see myself coming back here, helping kids or grandkids later on in life, maybe strapping on skates, going out on the pond and throwing the puck around,” he said. “There’s really nothing like this area.”

A version of this article appears in print on December 18, 2014, on Page B13 of the New York edition with the headline: Stirring Passions in Hockey Hotbed. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe